On this landscape, there are no condos. The Ontario Association of Architects has just released the winners of its 2013 awards of excellence, and there isn’t a multi-unit residential tower among them.

Given the rate at which condos pop out of the ground in this city — let alone province — that’s surprising, to say the least.

Alas, the marketplace has only lately come to the pleasures of architecture. That’s why the public sector in its various built forms — museums, libraries, schools, hospitals, community centres — is so much better represented.

Still, there’s no doubt that condo architecture can be interesting these days. If you think, for example, about what impresario David Mirvish hopes to pull off on King St. W. — a three-towered, mixed-use complex designed by superstar architect Frank Gehry — the future look very bright, indeed.

Then there’s The Well, between Wellington and Front Sts., west of Spadina, which takes condo architecture in a completely different direction. Here, Toronto architect David Pontarini has conceived a series of midrise buildings organized around a grid of narrow streets that are decidedly 19th century in their scale. Pontarini is also responsible for One Bloor, a 75-storey skyscraper whose exterior surfaces are enlivened by rippling balconies.

Daniel Libeskind’s L Tower at Yonge and Front Sts. is already a feature on the cityscape with its dramatically curving north façade.

Further south on the waterfront, Pier 27 (architectsAlliance) is also taking shape. A row of four midrise glass slabs on the south side of Queens Quay, east of Yonge St., hold up another two structures that sit horizontally on top as if they had fallen from a great height.

These projects will win awards, but not for a few years. In the meantime, OAA prizes have gone to the likes of Bridgepoint Active Health Care (KPMB, Diamond Schmitt, HDR Inc and Stantec), the Tommy Thompson Park Pavilions (Montgomery Sisam) and the Centennial College Library and Academic Facility (Diamond Schmitt).

year’s winners are of such high

Ontario’s architects have evolved a strong urban sensibility that enhances their work enormously. The dominant esthetic is neo-modernist — hardly a surprise at this point. But the unrelenting pressure to refresh familiar forms has led to a revitalization of architecture. Though we continue to build traditional towers, a number have acquired twists and turns that speak of a new willingness to think outside the “boring box.”

Another subtext to contemporary architecture is the desire for transparency. It pervades building design in many ways, most obviously in structures that use steel-frame construction. The exteriors of a 21st-century tower can be as invisible, let alone insubstantial, as a glass wall.

What’s most encouraging about the OAA lineup are the community college facilities, neighbourhood libraries and recreation centres included. Today, these mid-size public amenities attract serious architectural attention. They have become a showcase of the design profession’s ability to vanquish institutional mediocrity — despite inadequate budgets.

As the public sector has discovered, quality makes sense in the long run. The condo industry, its collective brain focused on the bottom line, has largely overlooked that point. It has also been slow to grasp the power of architecture to do anything more than enable developers to make easy money.

That, too, has started to change — finally.

> via thestar.com